ATLANTA — A cold case more than two decades old ended in a guilty verdict last week, the Fulton County District Attorney's Office announced.
According to a release, a jury on Friday convicted Vernon Spear, now 64, of the murder and rape of 60-year-old Edna Mae Whitt back in 2000. The case long sat cold until DNA analysis in 2011 produced a break.
Spear was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
“This conviction was the result of relentless investigation and skillful prosecution, and underscores the crucial role DNA testing plays in solving sexual assault crimes,” District Attorney Fani T. Willis said in a release. “After enduring a 23-year wait, Ms. Edna Mae Whitt’s family can finally find a sense of closure.”
The DA's Office said that on March 1, 2000, Whit had sought help in moving from Richardson Street to McDaniel Street in Atlanta, only a distance of about a mile.
A friend who helped arrange the move went to check on Whitt the next day and found a shattered window at the apartment. After calling police, officers found Whitt inside the apartment, dead from "multiple injuries to her head, signs of sexual assault, and a broken wrist and torn fingernails - which were determined to be indicators of a physical altercation by the medical examiner."
Her official cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the skull.
The investigation was cold until 2011, when Atlanta Police Detective Vincent Velazquez conducted a DNA analysis that ruled out three of the four men who had been involved in helping Whitt move.
Three years later, Spear's DNA was added to a federal database as he was in federal prison on gun charges. The system turned up a match with the sexual assault kit used in Whitt's autopsy 14 years earlier.
The DA's release added:
Further testing by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation confirmed that the DNA found in the victim during the sexual assault exam belonged to the Defendant. Persistent competency issues hindered the progress of the case. However, on November 7, 2023, a competency trial that included testimony of two doctors from Emory’s Law and Psychiatry Service conclusively established that the Defendant was deemed competent to stand trial.
The jury returned its guilty verdict after deliberating for less than an hour, the DA's Office said.
